Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Every year I get to host the Summer Institute of Teaching and Technology (SITT), a showcase of innovative teaching and faculty at UC Davis. We meet for two days at the end of the second summer session via Zoom.

One year we opted not to have me perform a SITT poem, and we heard about the absence in the SITT evaluations.

Inspired by a question I asked at the Pub Quiz the previous week, this year the SITT poem tried to echo Eminem’s famous song, but talked about my presenter name pronunciation concerns rather than my crashing and burning at a freestyle rap contest.

Lose Yourself at SITT

If you had only one chance a year to attend SITT, 

would you grab that opportunity, or let it slip?

OK. Dr. Andy

We’ve come to the peak of the week,

So try not to freak your freak or

Succumb to internal critique or

Be your typical too tongue-in-cheek 

as you rushedly pressure our next presenter.

Tech don’t fail me now;

Just smile and somehow

Learn how to pronounce all the proper nouns:

We’ve got Delmar Larsen, Margaret and Mark and

Cecilia Giulivi.

Oh brain, don’t leave me.

Oh good, my son Jukie has come by to prove he 

needs me once again to switch out his movie. 

Ope, no burrito

Ope, it’s nice to meet you

Ope, no toasters

It’s a teaching roller coaster

I’m so grateful for the spate-full

Of the frequently heard but difficult words 

I get to use when I introduce

You digital formidable summer institute people.

I tell ya, when ya got your agenda

You learn the entire production turns on whether 

I can string together cogent introductions 

to Talitha van der Meulen and to Heather Hether. 

And now we turn to Butner and to Bwalya Lungu;

If you have extra time, fill some with talk of Tor Cross or Janine Wilson.

Dr. Kenji Quides was happy to meet us, 

but you know the drill; we’ve spun the wheel:

and we still have to appeal to Professors Jane Beal and Walter Leal.

All of SITT depends on the wit 

Of that namby-pamby cotton candy Dr Andy. 

I have my doubts, but let’s find out 

if our engrossed host with the checklist can persist, 

that is, can he stick to our Modus operandi.

Take some final advice, 

now that you’ve broken the ice,

Try to preserve your tact, 

maintain Zoom room eye to eye contact, 

try not to wax, 

As a matter-of-fact, if your little pronunciation acts don’t detract, 

Then this packed SITT will be on track all year to enact 

the advertised roller coaster absent toaster droplet poster 

promised thematic big impacts.

Tech don’t fail me now

Just smile and somehow

Learn how to pronounce all the proper nouns.

We’ve got Delmar Larsen, Margaret and Mark and

Cecilia Giulivi

Oh brain, don’t leave me

Now at the end of our day one fun conference debut, as if right on cue, 

Jukie has chosen The Emperor’s New Groove, he

Insists that I once again switch out his movie.

Day one of SITT, that’s it.

If you would like to see the video of me performing this work before some of the SITT attendees, visit this page on The Wheel.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may feature some of the content from above, as well as questions about the following: famous beaches, technological developments, surprising conflicts, people named Linus, big cities where English is spoken, the Pacific Ocean, alphabetical lists, approaching 100, Paris, devastating hurricanes, slow exits, isolated islands, lovely gardens, home-cooked meals, what banks do, five-syllable adjectives that rarely come up in conversation, travelers to Detroit, country music dynasties, soccer, female friendships, felines that inspire films, actors and actresses, brave people, AI concerns, varieties of necks, townships, the examples of Finland and Italy, native expressions, vanishing souls, your memory of recent years, soccer coaches, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to The far-flung Original Vincibles, as well as to Quizimodo, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, Gena Harper, Dr. Doug, and others who have embraced the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I appreciate your supporting this endeavor! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from our last quiz:

1. Current Events – Names in the News. What prominent 76-year old U.S. Senator recently indicated that he is too old to run for a second term?  

2. Sports. According to The Wall Street Journal, Coco Gauff’s triumph at a sporting event last Saturday “felt like a thunderbolt of joy.” Name the event.  

3. Shakespeare. What ill-fated friend of Romeo speaks the line “A plague o’ both your houses!” in Act III, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet?  

P.P.S. Two Bay area poets and the phenomenal Tony Passarell will perform atop the Natsoulas Gallery roof as part of Poetry Night this week. Join us September 21^st at 7 PM for the fun. Details here: https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2023/09/tony-passarell-richard-loranger-and-greg-carter-perform-on-the-natsoulas-gallery-roof-on-september-21-2023/

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Tomorrow and Friday mornings (September 14 and 15) I get to host The Summer Institute of Teaching and Technology at UC Davis. I’ve been attending this yearly event for the last 28 of its 29 years, and I’ve been the host for more than 15 of those years.

As you can see from the page of on-demand content, this year I recorded interviews with ten colleagues, a few have which have participated in my pub quizzes over the years. Most people come for the synchronous presentations and the chance to engage with colleagues, even via Zoom. Faculty love to learn from their peer instructors about their plans for effective teaching in fall classes and throughout the school year at UC Davis.

If you know a faculty member who would be interested in “Small Acts, Big Impacts” (our theme this year), then please invite them to join us for this free event. At about 12:50 on Thursday, September 14^th, attendees will also get to see me read the annual SITT Poem. This year’s poem playfully rhymes “Dr. Andy” with “namby-pamby” (a word which is sure to be an answer to a future pub quiz question).

Speaking of people who step up to participate, I want to send a special shout-out and thanks to Gena Harper, known on YouTube as Gena Harper, Blind Woman of Action. A remarkable Davisite, Gena has used her circumstances to inspire sighted and visually impaired people alike with the way she rushes with brisk and cheerful readiness towards any sort of challenge. Gena has supported me and our pub quiz at the Platinum Tier on Patreon. Gena’s participation may obligate me to record some audio quizzes in the future.

I will be interviewing Gena and another blind friend on my KDVS radio show this afternoon at 5. Tune in then or check out the podcast recording tomorrow morning.

Please join us tonight at 7 at Sudwerk for the Pub Quiz. As you compete, you will encounter questions about entities that go, archaeologists, tree names, Live Aid, shovels, chocolate bars, thunderbolts of joy, famous binders, notable roads, clay particles, circuses, paydays, big smiles, wolves, ice skating, the work of nuns, separate bathrooms, people who wield spears, famous Danes, androids, space rangers, superheroes, unfortunate drifts, hearing loss concerns, horror shows, Yorkshire exports, scopes, amateur emptiness, frogs and monarchs, odd elements, polar bears, red towns, French people, big cities, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to The far-flung Original Vincibles, as well as to Quizimodo, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, the aforementioned Gena Harper and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. One member of one of those team, Catriona McPherson, was recently announced as the winner of the Anthony Award for Best Humorous Novel. Anyone who gets to talk to Catriona in person can attest to her humor. Congratulations, Catriona, and thanks to you for reading to the end of the newsletter.

Best,

Dr. Andy

Here are three questions from our last quiz.

1. Gangsters. Born in Italy with the name Salvatore, and later taking the name Charles, who is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States and was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family?  

2. Pop Culture – Music. What singer and actress had a number one hit in 2019 with “Lose You to Love Me” and a number three hit in 2022 with “Calm Down”?  

3. Sports. What former Baltimore Oriole holds the record for consecutive games played (2,632), having surpassed Lou Gehrig’s streak of 2,130 that had stood for 56 years and that many deemed unbreakable?  

P.S. Congratulations to the team Portraits for scoring 28 of 30 questions correctly on last week’s quiz. One of the captains of Portraits will be (uncharacteristically) absent tonight, so we will see if the team can keep up with the leaders without this figurehead.

P.P.S. Thanks to all the people that reached out to Kate and me on the occasion of our 31^st wedding anniversary. I feel lucky to have held Kate’s interest (and hand) for so long.  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Sometimes when we are celebrating a special day around my house I just substitute whatever poem I have written for the occasion for a long newsletter. September 7^th, for instance, is my wedding anniversary with my wife Kate.

Whereas last year, on our 30^th anniversary, I presented her a hardback original book of 100 poems, almost all of them written in secret for that one occasion, this year I wrote a little poem about the fact that 31 years is equal to about a billion seconds. In a world where so much of the news is about what Wordsworth in his famous sonnet called “getting and spending,” I wanted to focus more on the time I have spent with Kate. I value that.

So here is my own poem, one that started with the last line, then the rest was retrofit, in rhymes and themes, to match the ending.

Billion Second Sonnet (on our 31st anniversary) 

Kate, I courted you with a tape deck 

rather than one of those newfangled CD players.

I would rather see silver around your neck 

than to own gold, stocks, or shares.

I would rather see your name on my personal check 

than see it printed elsewhere.

I would rather see you in a turtleneck 

than to date some starlet in formalwear.

I would rather shuffle that diaphanous cabin deck 

of hearts with you than to dine on chinaware.

I would rather cherish a midnight moment to check 

in with you than own a mansion in Delaware.

I would rather have lived a billion sec-

onds with you than to retire a billionaire.

Happy anniversary, Kate!

I hope you can join us for tonight’s Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. If you do, you will encounter questions about the following: blockchain, funny wallets, Bible words, treatises, Pakistan, midfielders, tragedies, thieves, quanta, long wars, foreign countries, famous roads, Africa firsts, notable visits, public security, Sacramento exports, jars of cosmetics, cookies, rearranged Kiwis, Detroit, decades, sequels, famous sons of more famous parents, unbreakability, given name Charles, calmness, big cities, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to The far-flung Original Vincibles, as well as to Quizimodo, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. It’s wonderful to see so many of you in person! Thanks especially to Ellen for the email and the charming photograph!

Best,

Dr. Andy

Here are three trivia questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Science. Found on the limbs of many vertebrates, what do we call muscles having three points of attachment at one end?    

2. Great Americans. Sam Altman is admired for his work in what specific field?  

3. Unusual Words. What word refers to a strongly worded critical attack, a nearly simultaneous firing of all the guns from one side of a warship, a single poem published on quality paper, or the act of colliding with the side of a vehicle?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

When we arrived at the Sudwerk Brewing Company for the Pub Quiz last Wednesday, my wife Kate, my son Truman and I were delighted to discover that a table had been reserved for us at the front near the Quizmaster’s station, right under a mister.

Misting systems can quickly cool affected areas by dozens of degrees Fahrenheit through the magic of flash evaporation. The fine mist presented by the misters cools the air without soaking those nearby. If  you close your eyes, you can imagine the spray from a waterfall or a seaside leeward gust on a cloudy day.

Some people who blow-dry their hair do so to preclude the follicle chaos caused by a shower or a humid bathroom, so some such people might choose not to perch right under a mister. I told Kate Wednesday evening that her hair looked great, but I also fondly remember how curly her hair became when she and I lived in the same room in a London apartment in 1987. She noted with some concern that it rained almost every day that we lived in England together, but I had no complaints. Looking at Kate, I thought of a quotation by Julia Roberts, another curly-haired beauty who was getting her start in Hollywood around then: “My hair is naturally curly, and I have a whole lot of it.” 

I typically am still wearing my sun hat when my son Jukie and I venture over to the misters cooling the Delta of Venus patio (122 B Street) on Sunday afternoons. A longtime favorite haunting place of Humanities majors because of its closeness to Voorhies and Sproul Halls, Delta of Venus has been showcasing local jazz musicians at 2 o’clock on Sundays, and has been keeping the jazz fans cool with recently-installed misters.

Today I enjoy jazz at Delta, but on July 6, 1986, I ventured to RFK stadium in Washington D.C. to see one of my favorite concerts ever: Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, as well as Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. It was so warm down on the field that the stadium staff hosed down the grateful concertgoers who were closest to the stage, those who waited the longest to be close to their musical heroes. My friends Bob (Hi Bob!), Russ, Kevin and I watched the entire spectacle from the nosebleed seats opposite the performers. The sound was good, and we had room to dance up there, but we didn’t have the benefit of hoses or misters.

Some visitors to Disneyland this week will get soaked while strapped into their boats on the Grizzly River Run, and “Tiana’s Bayou Adventure” will (rightly) replace Splash Mountain in 2024, promising riders a soaking good time with splashes that will evaporate quickly in the summer heat, tonight we will depend upon the Sudwerk misters (or, for some, the indoor air conditioning) to keep cool.

“Water is the driving force of all nature,” Da Vinci said. Tonight I hope you will gather with us to enjoy some flash evaporation, a tall glass of cold water, or some other beverage at the Sudwerk Pub Quiz.

---

If you do, you will hear questions about topics raised above, and the following: favorite and beloved libraries, starters, vowels, villains that travel together, bicycles, debut novels, word counts, glucose, big horns, things named after swans, Oakland, other Leonardos, fictional authors, lifetime changes, lists of four, equivalencies, urban dances, belches, bridges, individual poems, muscles, free men, guts, sharks, Texas counties, Led Zeppelin songs, hackers, fruits, colleges east of the Mississippi, examples of the undead, people who are difficult to be caught, openers, current events, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to The far-flung Original Vincibles, as well as to Quizimodo, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. It’s wonderful to see so many of you in person!

Be well,

Dr. Andy

Find here three questions from the first Sudwerk Pub Quiz:

1. Books and Authors. Born in Columbus, Ohio, what author who has sold more than 400 million books has been referred to as the “Stephen King of children’s literature”?  

2. Current Events – Names in the News. One of our country’s least competent lawyers recently turned himself over to police in Atlanta. What is his name?  

3. Sports. 30 NFL writers at the sports journalism website The Athletic’s recently ranked their top five favorite stadiums. The average top choice by a wide margin was U.S. Bank Stadium. What NFL team plays its home games at this stadium with a seating capacity of 66,000?  

P.S. I’ve added some video to Patreon if you would like to hear a sample of the content from last week’s quiz. Check it out at https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been creating weekly trivia contests for Patreon supporters since March of 2020. I approach writing trivia questions the way that other people complete crossword puzzles or solve the daily Wordle. I wonder to myself how a scientific fact or a dramatic news story, such as the unsurprising plane crash today of vocal Putin thorn Yevgeny Prigozhin, could be refashioned as a puzzle for pub quiz participants. I challenge myself by challenging others. I also treasure the opportunity to keep learning. As Ben Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

While I appreciate the intellectual engagement, I also recognize how mediated this work can be. I’ve been creating quiz questions in the peace of my own home with my French bulldog sitting in my lap (during colder months) or a tower fan blowing upon me (during warmer months). I prefer not to stay sedentary for very long, and I do miss the dust of the arena, the din of competition, the carnival barker’s use of a microphone. I’ve exercised my legs every day since I saw you last, but I’ve rarely exercised my lungs. After all my lungs went through in 2022, I should see how they are faring.

In a piece titled “Optimism: An Essay,” Helen Keller wrote “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” While I have been creating “trials” of sorts for the supporters who have supported my virtual pub quiz on Patreon, I have longed for an opportunity to quiet a crowd by introducing myself and the pub quiz, and with gusto.

Ladies and gentlemen, that day has come. The live pub quiz is back!

This evening at 7, in the renovated beer garden of the Sudwerk Brewing Company (2001 2^nd Street), protected by a panoply of sun shades, cooled by gentle misters, and surrounded by old friends and new, I am reviving Dr. Andy’s Pub Quiz.

If you live in or near Davis, California, and if you also yearn for time with old and new friends, for entertainment, and for playful competition that might yield you bragging rights and fabulous prizes, I invite you to join me Wednesday nights this season and for the foreseeable future for The Sudwerk Brewing Company Pub Quiz.

The Sudwerk chef is talented and resourceful, the brew-master has won awards for his brews, the wait staff is affable and attentive, and the sound system is new, tested, and ready. The questions are revised and fresh (though one comes from the published quiz from this week in 2022), and the quizmaster will be eager. I hope that you can join us for the fun!

Tonight expect questions on topics raised above, as well as on lawyers, best-selling authors, disasters, ranked alumni, short selections, founding fathers, people named Charles, land masses, rabbits, football stars, seemingly American queens, Oscar-nominated films, pals, the Hapsburg Empire, Robin Williams, teens, innovative technologists, young active rosters, space travel, cheesy occasions, volcanic activity, cowboys, books that sold many tickets, Spotify, Emmy-winners, cooks that like to name things, newspaper headlines, Shakespeare, and science!

Seating for the pub quiz will be first come, first served, so participants should arrive early to claim a table. As ever, prizes will include gift cards and swag. I will be coming from my KDVS radio show, so I will have only enough time before the event to eat and test the mic, though I look forward to chatting with friends after the Pub Quiz.

Speaking of friends, I would like to thank all the people who supported the Pub Quiz since the closure of de Vere’s Irish Pub in downtown Davis. I send my heart out to the following people and teams: The Original Vincibles, Carol Lynne Conrad-Forrest and Quizimodo, Jennifer Newell and The Outside Agitators, Amy Abramson and The Mavens, The Wallace-Everitt Family, The Inkelas Family, Greg Miller and Bono’s Pro Bono Obo Bonobos, The Vocal Art Ensemble Team, Meaghan Likes, Kristin Kameen, Dana Ferris, Glenn and Julie Nedwin, Lois and Bruce Wolk, Doug Desalles, Michael Koltnow, Kari Peterson, Portraits, Faith, Brooke, Vincent Block, Mercedes Ibanez, Jasmine, Josh, Anli Zhang, Catlyn LeGault, Charles Davis, Lori Raineri, Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, Alex Hovan, Thomas Pomroy, the Inkelas family, Brook Ostrom, Keltie Jones, Sally Madden, Craig Lowe, June Gillam, Richard Deneault, and Gadi. Many of these people pledged on behalf of their teams, and many are still subscribed to the weekly pub quiz, to be shared Thursdays via Patreon.

I hope to see you soon at the Pub Quiz!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Four for Four. Which of the following circa 1995 films were nominated for Academy Awards: Babe, Heat, Jade, Nell?  

2. Big Cities. What city is the main core of the largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the largest inland metropolitan area in the U.S. that lacks any navigable link to the sea?  

3. Pop Culture – Music. Living from 1919 to 2014, what folk singer wrote songs that became hits for The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and The Byrds?  

Dr. Andy Jones, former quizmaster at Bistro 33 and de Vere’s Irish Pub, has moved his popular pub quiz to Sudwerk Brewing Company, the renovated restaurant and brewery at 2001 2^nd Street in Davis. The pub quiz will take place Wednesday evenings at 7 beginning on August 23.

The pub quiz will be held primarily in the Sudwerk beer garden. This modernized south-facing patio features dozens of tables, comfortable seats, multiple fire pits, sun shades, and an excellent sound system. Misters will help to keep the patio cool during warm Davis nights.

Seating for the pub quiz will be first come, first served, so participants should arrive early to claim a table. Dr. Andy will be asking questions about a variety of topics, including history, literature, current events, popular culture, geography, books and authors, sports, and science. Up to six players can compete on a team. Prizes include gift cards and swag.

A longtime writing program faculty member at UC Davis, Dr. Andy Jones served two terms as poet laureate of Davis, he hosts the Poetry Night Reading Series at the John Natsoulas Gallery, and he is the host of the radio show and podcast Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour on KDVS. The author of four books, including the 2018 compendium Pub Quizzes: Trivia for Smart People, Dr. Andy has been a professional quizmaster since 2007. He is now finishing the second book in the Pub Quizzes series.

Everyone willing to put away a smartphone for 90 minutes is welcome to participate. Those wishing to subscribe to the pub quiz, and receive 31 questions every Thursday, can do so at https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster.

“I think that the Pub Quiz is probably the most fun interactive evening out that one can find in all of Davis. Great, challenging questions, an intelligent and terrific vibe, super food and drinks. An all-around winner.” John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author

Dear Friends,

Thanks for your patience.

I’ve let my grief silence me for a couple weeks. After the sudden death of my friend David Breaux, I knew I would have to write about him before I wrote about anything else, but I didn’t feel ready to write about David.

Many of us try to live lives guided by compassion, but David made this his life’s work. To the extent that David elevated kindness (or inspiring thoughts about kindness) above every other concern, such as his own housing and safety, he didn’t match our expectations of a fellow citizen. Seeing David standing on a street corner in all kinds of weather, asking for definitions of compassion, some people thought he was crazy.

A comparative religion class would reveal that contemporaries of Moses, The Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed also thought they were crazy. Now we venerate those people. They recognized something that we were not ready to see, and now on weekends many of us repeat, chant, or sing what they told us.

All four of those religious figures lived in authoritarian eras (one could argue that the poet King David was himself a despot), and so they made proclamations, handing us ready-made precepts to live by.

David Breaux, by contrast, lived in a democracy, so he invited us to participate in the process of reflecting on, defining, and facilitating compassion. Sharing with David something that he could add to his notebook or his YouTube channel made me feel like I was contributing to a positive definition of the city of Davis.

I think of the last lines of one of my favorite short sections of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass:

O Me! O Life!

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

David Breaux asked us each to contribute a verse.

One of Walt Whitman’s contemporaries, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said that “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” David shared kindnesses often, and we in the City of Davis also supported him in his journey. A friend of mine who volunteers in the Night Market in Central Park says that David was usually first in line when they started serving food that had been donated from local restaurants.

Nevertheless, I am haunted by that sentiment that “you never know how soon it will be too late.”

I had many conversations with David over the years, I introduced him to and had him give impromptu guest lectures to students in three of my first-year seminars, and I had him talk about his compassion project on my KDVS radio show.

At the funeral service of Karim Abou Najm, his father voiced regrets that he had not told his son more often that he loved him. Then he asked us to call a parent or a child or another beloved and tell them right then that we loved them. And then he waited for us to do so.

Grieving alone multiplies the grief, Professor Majdi Abou Najm told us, but grieving with others divides the grief.

It is too late in this world for me to connect with David Breaux (or my father or my best friend Tito) just one more time. Instead, I share these words with you with the hope that, together, we might divide our feeling of sadness and thus make them more bearable.

David Breaux gave us perhaps only one commandment: “Forgive.” Many will find his directive easy to understand and difficult to put into practice.

As I reflect on the garden of flowers that adorns David’s Compassion Bench, I think he would have appreciated this quotation by Rumi:

“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”

---

Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who has been supporting me on Patreon. I’ve enjoyed creating 31 fresh Pub Quiz questions for subscribers every week, and I’m also making significant progress on a new Pub Quiz book, due out later this year.

Teams such as Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, and The Outside Agitators have paid for a quiz every week for more than a year. Thanks! Would you care to join them?

Here are four questions from a recent quiz:

1. Internet Culture. Players are not happy that you cannot pet the dog in a new video game with the subtitle “Tears of the Kingdom.” What is the title? 

2. Big Mountains. Recognized as the tallest mountain in North America, “Mount McKinley” was the official name recognized by the federal government of the United States from 1917 until 2015. What is its name today? 

3. Science. The largest gland in the human body is a spongy mass of wedge-shaped lobes. Name it. 

4. Unusual Words. What F verb means “Surprise Someone Greatly”? 

Be well.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Poetry Night is Thursday at the John Natsoulas Gallery. We start at 7. Care for some rooftop poetry under the stars?

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I imagine that one’s first college visit as a high school junior is like one’s first visit to The Cheesecake Factory, with over 250 items on the menu. Unlike the food choices at the Factory, most of which your cardiologist would consider inadvisable, just about all the class options in the college course catalogue are potentially judicious choices, depending on the teachers. In 1989, then future U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky told me that when it comes to classes in a graduate English program, “it’s not the courses, it’s the horses.”

This week my son Truman visited Galesburg, Illinois, in order to find out more about Knox College. Known for its English Department and its writing program, Knox is one of those small liberal arts colleges that promise to change lives. Students there get to take writing workshops in the same building where Lincoln and Douglas held one of their seven debates, publicity events to convince local voters in the Illinois General Assembly to prefer one candidate over the other for the U.S. Senate in 1858.

The debates were three hours long, about as long as the advanced poetry workshops that I have taught here at UC Davis. One candidate would speak first for 60 minutes, after which the other candidate would challenge and rebut for 90 minutes, followed by the first candidate speaking for another 30 minutes to rebut the rebuttal. Like some of the classes I taught during the Covid era, these events took place outdoors so that more people could gather round to hear the orators. And like some of the best supported podcasters of the current era, Abraham Lincoln benefitted from delegates (stenographers in the audience, and sympathetic newspapers in Chicago and elsewhere) who recorded and broadcast his every word to Chicago and everywhere east. He turned his speeches into a well-received and top-selling book that helped set the stage for his becoming the nominee of the new Republican party, and our first Republican president.

Knox College administrators are keenly aware of this special place its extant buildings play in American history. When Kate sent me pictures of the Knox County library and some of the museum-like Old Main building where the 1858 debate occurred, I remarked that the place should be called “Lincoln College.” One can find a “Looking for Lincoln Heritage Coalition” as well as a Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. The Old Main building has a number of admirable anti-slavery exhibits. I seem to remember from history class with Howard Zinn that Lincoln lost that debate, and that in 1858 the venerated and towering politician argued merely for the cessation of slavery in states newly added to the Union, rather than its eradication in the south.

Even if he was initially an incrementalistic abolitionist rather than a radical, Lincoln is still a hero to me. And as Lincoln himself said, “A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.”

So will Truman end up attending Knox College? Time will tell. The Director of the Writing Program there met with Truman, his sister Geneva, and their mom Kate for 70 minutes this week. That’s the sort of compelling and welcome personal attention that perhaps only a small college can offer. 

Campus visits are compelling. During my ill-fated trip to visit New York and New England colleges as a high school junior, I did tour Boston University, and ended up attending. College tours today do a much better job than mine did of making the students feel seen and wanted. Kate, our daughter Geneva, and Truman attended a series of financial aid presentations meant to communicate that, unlike my dad, nobody pays the sticker price for a college education in 2023. We will see.

Galesburg, Illinois is not only the home of Knox College (where students eat in an on-campus café called The Hard Knox), but also the birthplace of the poet Carl Sandburg. In addition to poems about fog and grass (Thanks for the inspiration, Walt Whitman), Sandburg is best known for his poem “Chicago,” published in Chicago’s Poetry Magazine in 1914 (and thus in the public domain). It is so well known that even my wildlife biologist friend Roy quoted its “broad shoulders” when he first met my impressive wife Kate, also from Chicago, more than 30 years ago.

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

   Bareheaded,

   Shoveling,

   Wrecking,

   Planning,

   Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

                   Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

I was going to say that most of the occupations that start and end this poem are not likely to be replaced in 2023 by generative large language neural network such as Chat GPT, but then I remembered that most of that work is done (or assisted) by robots. The coming years will reveal how well Knox College, UC Davis, and other centers for higher education prepare our students for a world where there might be a lot less for humans to do.

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Truman is one of the featured high school actors at the April 8 Stories on Stage with Kim Stanley Robinson in conversation with Dr. Andy Jones. Most public speaking gigs don’t make me nervous, but this one does. Stan is an amazing writer and thinker, and I am loving his most recent book, a nonfiction work titled The High Sierra: A Love Story.

Thanks to everyone who supports the ongoing asynchronous pub quizzes that I create for you every week. Please drop me a line if you would like to send you a sample (this week’s quiz), or just pick a tier on Patreonand join the fun, just as Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, The Mavens, and the Outside Agitators do. Every Patreon patron will receive an e-book or paperback of my next pub quiz book, due out later this year.

Speaking of the Agitators, congratulations to them for winning my most recent live Pub Quiz at the Encounters UFO Xperience Museum. Word on the street is that Encounters UFO Xperience is running a Picnic Day fundraiser of sorts for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, that tiny organization that supports medical research into the rare syndrome that my family knows too well. Perhaps I will see you at the “Xperience” on April 15. If not, you could mail in your support for this effort by sending a check to the Foundation. Thanks!

Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Anniston’s highest grossing film also featured Steve Carrell and Jim Carey in the lead. Name the film.

2. Science: California Geology. What kind of bowl in the Sierras is a half-bowl? 

3. Books and Authors. Who wrote Slouching Towards Bethlehem? 

Thanks for reading, and for your patience. Every new reader of this newsletter is a treasure.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

It’s raining again today, this time with thunder and hail, in Davis, California. The rain encourages contemplation, or, for me, prosaic and poetic composition, because of the inactivity that it enforces, at least in most Californians I know.

One afternoon last week Jukie and I took the dog for a long greenbelt walk on one of the days that threatened rain, and we encountered almost no one. We have so much to occupy us indoors these days – our work duties as well as our entertainments – that many of us do not step outside on a rainy day.

I can see why. Currently I recline in a La-Z-Boy recliner that conforms to my frame so comfortably. While it comforts me, I remember what the father of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford, famously said to people like me who appreciate comfortable chairs: “Of all created comforts, God is the lender; you are the borrower, not the owner.” I appreciate our Davis home that protects me from the elements. Above me is the second floor of our home and at least one sleeping member of the family, and above that, an attic and a newish roof. Rarely does it rain so hard in Davis that I can hear it clearly from my first-floor writing perch, though it did today.

Rather than relying on auditory evidence, we typically look outside to confirm the strength of the rain. The outdoor glass table behind the house, purchased so that we could have friends over for dinner, despite the pandemic, substitutes for a weathervane. Beholding the splashing of rain like an amateur meteorologist, I behold the frenetic little show, a transparent fireworks display.

Outside the south window, the trumpet flowers of the Chicklet Orange Esperanza bush seem to herald the first day of spring, bowing and dipping as they are buffeted by the insistent raindrops. Nearby, an unidentifiable bush that has sprouted chaotic vines seems to be dancing, perhaps expressing the joy of all California flora that we have had such a wet winter, and that the rain will continue into the week, as the lion of spring roars.

Showers such as these summon to my mind the memory of trying to fall asleep in my family’s cabin during a summer rainstorm. That three-room hut in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, bought for a few thousand dollars in the 1950s, seemed to me like a museum celebrating the early life of my grandmother, Vera, who had spent her 1900s and 1910s girlhood on a farm a block from the Beavertown cemetery where she is buried today. We loved Grandma’s austere time machine. By the standards of the 1970s, with our love of our television shows and record albums, the cabin was retro: The last structure on Reservoir Road at the base of Shade Mountain had no TV and no hi-fi. 

Indoors we instead had the radio, which my grandmother turned on almost hourly to check the weather report; paperback novels and hardbacks filled with Roosevelt-era editorial cartoons left behind by previous generations of visitors; and different colored metal basins in the kitchen, one for washing hands and another for washing dishes. All the kitchen implements – I remember the potato masher and three-tined carving fork with their wooden handles, the chipped mismatched Pennsylvania Dutch porcelain, the ancient cookie tins – seemed well-worn. Once my grandmother told me that people were so poor in the 1930s that they reused and recycled everything, a practice she continued. 

Outside the cabin, where I spent most of my daylight hours, we had the pump where we got the fresh water that filled those basins, the outhouse, and the path leading to the creek. Much to my delight, Luphers Run, the creek which provided Beavertown its water, not only crossed our little parcel of property, but it was also filled with crayfish and water striders. I am so glad to have spent those summers in the creek rather than on the couch.

But back to that rainstorm. While my home in Davis has a new (expensive) roof and a storey of bedrooms under the unused attic upstairs, the cabin in Beavertown had a 1930s era corrugated metal roof. Each raindrop that fell upon the rooftop a few feet above my head resounded like an acoustic explosion. On summer break from my Waldorf school where we studied Greek and Roman gods, I felt that Tempestas, the Roman goddess of storms or sudden weather, had hired a troupe of mad percussionists to tap and pound their metal drums erratically.

If I hadn’t been so exhausted from building and then disassembling (as I was ordered to) shale rock dams in the creek all day, the racket from that raucous summer tempest might not have let me fall asleep at all.

When we were stuck inside on a rainy day, Grandma used to tell us a misquoted version of “Into each life some rain must fall.” Later I discovered that she was quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (perhaps the most-read poet of 19^th century America), and later still, I came across Longfellow’s poem “Rain in Summer” and the lines that present this remembered inclement cacophony better than my words above:

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

I hope that the clatter of rainstorms’ hoofs continues on your roof and mine through the coming weeks, and that the life breathed into our perpetually dry state brings all of us a more substantive comfort than what can be found in any recliner.

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While I get to host in-person or Zoom Pub Quizzes on occasion, as happened on March 9^th (and thanks to all of you who attended), these days I primarily share Pub Quizzes asynchronously. If you would like to receive a weekly Pub Quiz of 30 questions and answers, and if you would like to support these ongoing oddball newsletters about rain and such, please sign up over at Patreon. This week on Patreon, for example, regulars heard audio of me reading “Rain in Summer” by Longfellow. I will continue to share more audio of poetry and other writing, by famous authors and by me, if there is interest. Thanks especially to the teams who pledge ongoing support for all their members, and who share the quizzes via Zoom or in person (and I’m thinking especially of Quizzmodo, the Outside Agitators, The Mavens, and the Original Vincibles).

Here are five questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Four for Four. Which of the following, if any, fluoresce under a black light: adult scorpions, baby scorpions, floral scorpions, scorpion fossils? 

2. Science. The hottest planet in our solar system is the only such planet that rotates clockwise. Name it. 

3. Great Americans. One U.S. President reportedly spoke eight foreign languages (Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish), more than any other U.S. president. He remains the only U.S. president who could converse in Russian. Name him. 

Our next Poetry Night takes place on April 6^th at the Natsoulas Gallery. Plan to join us!

Dr. Andy